Neuroaesthetics and the psychology of aesthetics
Publication date
2009
Document type
Sammelbandbeitrag oder Buchkapitel
Author
Organisational unit
Institut für Allgemeine Psychologie, Universität Leipzig
Book title
Neuroaesthetics
First page
27
Last page
42
Part of the university bibliography
Nein
Abstract
As the term neuroaesthetics already denotes, cognitive neuroscientists have rediscovered the traditional discipline of empirical aesthetics. Over the past years, more and more researchers have begun to employ neuroscientific tools in the psychological study of aesthetic processing, or started to direct research in functional (cognitive) neuroscience toward the study of aesthetic processing. This chapter will trace how their endeavors are largely rooted in the classical, pragmatically dualistic approach of psychophysics. Here, objective measures of neural activity are correlated with reports of individual, subjective experience. This chapter will briefly review work showing that aesthetic processing, the evaluation or production of beauty, ugliness, prettiness, harmony, elegance, shapeliness, or charm, is governed by a host of factors such as stimulus symmetry, complexity, novelty, familiarity, artistic style, appeal to social status, and individual preferences. Cultures differ in what is considered beautiful and within cultures, people differ. Moreover, the degree of agreement between individuals differs between content domains. Therefore, aesthetic processing can be usefully considered from an evolutionary, historical, cultural, educational, cognitive, (neuro)biological, individual, personality, emotional, and situational perspective, and probably many more. Hence, it has been argued that human aesthetics, as a whole, is best approached from a number of different perspectives at several different levels of analysis. This chapter also reviews a framework of seven such vantage points for today's Psychology of Aesthetics (Jacobsen, 2006). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Description
Chapter 3
Cite as
Jacobsen, T. (2009). Neuroaesthetics and the psychology of aesthetics. In M. Skov & O. Vartanian (Eds.), Neuroaesthetics (pp. 27–42). Baywood Publishing Co.
Version
Published version
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